The 9th of Av in Jewish calendars is Friday on steroids. Nerves must be jangling as that day of the calendar approaches.
The worst high points in the history of the Jews happen on this day.
On that day in 586 BC, the Babylonians demolished the First Temple in Jerusalem built by the legendary Jewish king, Solomon. In the year 70AD, the Romans almost completely demolished the Second Temple built by King Herod the Great. What survived were the retaining walls, particularly sacred to the Jews is the wall on the west side. It's known as either the Wailing Wall or the Western Wall.
Continuing the Jews incredible run of bad luck, on that same date in the year 135 AD, Rome brought to an end the Bar-Kochba revolt. Ending Jewish dreams of independence. After that revolt the province of Judaea was renamed Palestina harkening back to the previous occupants of that land in the long distant past, before the Jews arrived, the Philistines. The Philistines had lived in and around Gaza.
Then moving closer to our own times, on that same day, England expelled its Jews in the thirteenth century, France expelled its Jews in the fourteenth, and Spain, after Ferdinand and Isabella had reconquered all of their country from the Muslims, expelled their Jews in the fifteenth century.
You won’t be surprised to hear that in Jerusalem, on the 9th of Av, in 1929, one of the bloodiest riots so far against the Jews started, the triggering factor was the Grand Mufti. The object of the riot was over what the Jews call the Wailing Wall, or the Western Wall.
That riot was significant – it marked the beginning of a swelling violence against the Jews in Palestine, that would culminate in the Arab Revolt that broke out in 1936, all of which trouble saw the Jews having various rights of immigrating into Palestine, limited or ended, and likewise their entitlement to acquire land. This programme’s about the 1929 riots – and you’re not going to believe what happened.
Tag words: 9th of Av; Babylonians; Destruction of the First Temple; Romans; destruction of the Second Temple; King Solomon; King Herod the Great; Wailing Wall; Western Wall; Bar-Kochba revolt; Palestina; Philistines; Ferdinand and Isabella; Grand Mufti; Haj Amin al-Husseini; Arab Revolt 1936; Mohammad; Buraq; Night Journey to Jerusalem; British Mandate; Abu Maidan waqf; Saladin; Afdal; Yom Kippur; Torah; Balfour Declaration; Ottoman Empire; Star of David; the Dome of the Rock; Buraq Campaign; Al-Aqsa Mosque; Zionists; Joseph Klausner; Jabotinsky; Superintendent Raymond Cafferata; Ahron Bernzweig; God; Abu Mahmoud al-Kurdiya; North Vietnamese Tet offensive; Thawrat al-Buraq; the Buraq Uprising; British High Commissioner to the Palestinian Mandate; Sir John Chancellor; Cairo's Al-Ahram newspaper; Evening Star; Pan-Islamic Congress; Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Shawkat Ali; Muhammed Ali; Abraham; Shakib Arslam; Arab Party for Independence; Adolf Hitler; White Paper; Hope Simpson Report; Chaim Weitzman; World Zionist Organisation; Ramsay MacDonald; David Ben-Gurion;
